Shackled sadistic fiend Robert Williams feels tug of justice

As the judge's minimum sentence neared half a millennium, Robert Williams sat slumped like a kid bored in class, his feet extending from under the defendant's table.

But the outwardly impassive monster gave it away when he drew back his right foot and extended it again.

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Williams kept the right foot close enough to the left that he did not reach the limit of the chain in between and feel the tug that signaled he was in someone else's power.

As far back as when he was a school kid, Williams has delighted in the power that comes with inflicting pain on someone else, particularly when that someone is defenseless.

He exercised the only power he could during the trial by refusing to attend. He remained in his cell rather than listen to the jury hand down its verdict. And he tried to do it again when it came time for his sentencing Thursday morning.

The judge made clear who was in charge when she ordered the Department of Correction to produce him. Six helmeted correction officers in body armor brought him into the 11th-floor courtroom at 2:40 p.m. He moved with them as if he were trying to avoid feeling he was in their absolute control.

He slumped into the chair as if they had not seated him there. He stuck out his legs and at one point cocked back his feet, digging in his heels.

He never once caused the chain linking one ankle with the other to go taut with the truth of who was now the prisoner.

For 19 horrific hours last year, this nondescript, balding ex-con of average height and weight delighted in torturing, maiming, raping and burning a young woman.

"Extraordinary evil," the justice said.

Evil matched by the victim's courage and resilience.

"Every decent person who witnessed [her] testimony in this courtroom was impressed by her bravery and her intelligence and her extraordinary grace in the face of the horror that the defendant inflicted upon her," the justice said.

At one point, the victim had described lying bound, with her eyelids scissored and her mouth Krazy Glued shut, listening to a sound that signaled her tormentor was about to pour more boiling water on her.

"Things like whistles on tea kettles and displays of Krazy Glue in the drugstore leave me shaking and short of breath," she wrote in a presentencing statement.

The judge now offered a hope that the whole city should share.

"I think we all join in wishing her happiness and success and in the hope that her spirit lets her find some peace," she said.